Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Study: Immigrants and their kids founded 45% of U.S. Fortune 500 companies

axios.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 156 posts

Re: Study: Immigrants and their kids founded 45% of U.S. Fortune 500 companies

#91

Post by close04 »

SkyBelow wrote: post #81
close04 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But do you suspect the methodology, the results, or the conclusion were "faked" or inaccurate? Or do you consider it an accurate piece but suspect the reasons behind publishing it? ...And suddenly a wave of downvotes in less than 2 minutes. No justified concerns attached to them though.

>But do you suspect the methodology, the results, or the conclusion were "faked" or inaccurate? Selective definitions were used. They weren't hidden for anyone willing to look into the details, but if this was a political move (I'm not saying it was, but if it was) then the people who did it would know full well that the headline would have far more penetration than any statistical critique with how terms were define…

Forming an opinion based solely on the title or the (perceived) author's bias without ever reading the content is a problem no matter where you stand. Which is why I asked OP to help me understand their reasoning behind discrediting the author, suggesting a conclusion but not even attempting to discuss the content. How is this different from anybody responding to a comment solely by attacking the person who wrote it and their political affiliations rather than attempt to discuss the actual content?

Would you question a reply like "Please keep in mind that this opinion came from [a member of party X] / [a supporter of cause Y] so I don't think their opinion is neutral [period]" to one of your comments or remarks? And that's not even going into the whole "what's a 100% neutral opinion".

And so many downvotes for a question that was not leading in any way (offered both alternatives as equally probable) also suggests a bias to consider only the arguments that support your own views and react "aggressively" to anything that seems to clash with their beliefs.

Re: Study: Immigrants and their kids founded 45% of U.S. Fortune 500 companies

#92

Post by tehlike »

js8 wrote: post #64
tehlike wrote: post #21

I think there is some bias due to historical events. Ww2 caused a lot of jewish immigrants to emmigrate from europe and some emigrated later from russia. They have been very successful in general. I am sure this particular population already skews the statistics already.

It's not just Jewish people, though. Smart people in general emigrate sooner when a country is turning sour.

Or risk taker. Going to a country you have no ties to, and starting a whole new life... Takes guts...

Re: Study: Immigrants and their kids founded 45% of U.S. Fortune 500 companies

#93

Post by logicchains »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #76
joshuaheard wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe if the study was not published by a pro-immigrant think tank, but was published by a think tank focused on, say, economics or social policy.

In my experience, most articles that advocate for a particular action or policy make unstated assumptions about metaphysics / ethics. I'm not sure economics or social-policy articles would be an exception. For example: It's pretty uncontroversial to say that ${N} persons cross the Mexican-to-American border, not at official government checkpoints, annually. It's slightly more controversial to claim that ${M} of them…

>Personally, I haven't found any good, reasoned way to argue about those metaphysical issues. I have personal preferences, and I know which things rub me the wrong way more than others. But in the end it seems like a matter of taste, so I'm not even sure it's worth trying to persuade others.

One approach is to try and adopt a system that has a minimal amount of assumptions and inconsistencies. This is the approach taken by economics. The core idea is that, if somebody is willing to exchange their labour/product of their labour for something, then they demonstrably value that thing more at that time than all other possible things for which they could have exchanged their labour/product of their labour. A surprisingly large body of reasoning is built upon this and little else.

This is why most economists, mainstream or otherwise, support immigration. The immigrant wants it, their employer wants it and their landlord wants it, otherwise none of them would have agreed to it, so preventing this arrangement prevents them from realising their top preferences at that time, forcing them to settle for a less desired outcomes. What about the fact it might put a local out of a job? That argument requires some kind of assumptions that how much somebody "deserves" a job depends on where they're born; it's hard to justify without adding extra axioms, and certainly not self-evident (many people argue it's unjust to descriminate based on place of birth). Similarly, what about the argument that immigration destroys cultural homogeneity? This requires some kind of assumptions to justify why cultural homogeneity is desirable, which are hard to even specify, as it requires first clearly defining the concept of culture.

Re: Study: Immigrants and their kids founded 45% of U.S. Fortune 500 companies

#94

Post by will4274 »

shrikant wrote: post #24

I've flagged this post because (IMHO): 1) Doesn't belong on HN. 2) Comments so far are unsubstantive -- ranging from "middlebrow dismissal" to flamebait. 3) Doesn't appear to be conducive to any sort of useful discussion. Edit: Clearly I've struck a nerve someplace.

I tend to agree. This study has some pretty serious methodology problems that the article ignores completely. It seems like somebody with an agenda decided to fund some science and skip the rigor.

Re: Study: Immigrants and their kids founded 45% of U.S. Fortune 500 companies

#95

Post by dagaci »

gingabriska wrote: post #49
256 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of other differences between America and China that make this a terrible comparison.

Japan, Korea, Germany are also in line and also India (with successful space program without immigrants). There are many countries which are successful without immigrants, some of them are even democracies.

I hope your not including India in your list as an example of ethnic uniformity, are you even aware of the vast number of different cultures and languages spoken in India? India stands as the original melting pot since ancient times. Oh and it also has the one of the largest immigrant population in the modern world.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/03/03/india-is-a-...

Re: Study: Immigrants and their kids founded 45% of U.S. Fortune 500 companies

#97

Post by sterkekoffie »

bruceb wrote: post #23
Armisael16 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any criticism of the actual study or are you immediately dismissing it because you think the publisher is probably biased?

yes, they don't even link to their methodology in their interactive tool that this article is based on. The onus is on them to prove their point.

This tool is based on a brief [1] which is basically an update of a study [2] they released in 2011. Neither goes into much detail on methodology but the original study at least has an appendix identifying the immigrant founder(s).

[1] https://research.newamericaneconomy.org/report/new-american-...

[2] https://www.newamericaneconomy.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/0...

Re: Study: Immigrants and their kids founded 45% of U.S. Fortune 500 companies

#98

Post by fortran77 »

hartator wrote: post #54
ilikehurdles wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a hypothesis related to this. I believe that surviving being a child refugee in America is something that really brings out the grit in a person. Seeing the things your family goes through to provide a normal life for you in a strange and new place, overcoming ethnic biases, language barriers, and life on government assistance really brings out the attitudes of drive and perseverance toward reaching one's goal…

Andy Grove came in the US at 20. He was never on government assistance nor saw his family having to adapt to a new place.

I think his family had to do a great deal of adapting when their whole life was turned upside down. From his Wikipedia Biography:

> When he was eight, the Nazis occupied Hungary and deported nearly 500,000 Jews to concentration camps, including Auschwitz. Its commandant, Rudolf Höss, said at his trial that he killed 400,000 Hungarian Jews in three months.[9] To avoid being arrested, Grove and his mother took on false identities and were sheltered by friends.[7] His father, however, was arrested and taken to an Eastern Labor Camp to do forced labor, and was reunited with his family only after the war.[10]

> During the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, when he was 20, he left his home and family and escaped across the border into Austria. Penniless and barely able to speak English, in 1957 he eventually made his way to the United States. He later changed his name to the anglicized Andrew S. Grove.[1][11] Grove summarized his first twenty years of life in Hungary in his memoirs:

> By the time I was twenty, I had lived through a Hungarian Fascist dictatorship, German military occupation, the Nazis' "Final Solution," the siege of Budapest by the Soviet Red Army, a period of chaotic democracy in the years immediately after the war, a variety of repressive Communist regimes, and a popular uprising that was put down at gunpoint... [where] many young people were killed; countless others were interned. Some two hundred thousand Hungarians escaped to the West. I was one of them.[1]

Re: Study: Immigrants and their kids founded 45% of U.S. Fortune 500 companies

#99

Post by eesmith »

See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9085970 from 4 years ago, "Most high tech companies are founded by founded by First/2nd gen immigrants" and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11306290 from 3 years ago, "Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups".

Some of the same analysis questions bring brought up now were also brought up in those earlier threads.

Re: Study: Immigrants and their kids founded 45% of U.S. Fortune 500 companies

#100

Post by komali2 »

joshuaheard wrote: post #65
save_ferris wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: what does a neutral view on immigrants look like? How does one take a view on immigrants without aligning with one side of the debate? You bring up a valid point in identifying the authors of this study. I'm just not sure what a truly neutral position in that debate would look like.

Maybe if the study was not published by a pro-immigrant think tank, but was published by a think tank focused on, say, economics or social policy.

But, think tanks exist to explore specific issues within their realm of concern.

An "economic think tank" that did a bunch of research into, and then published a study on, immigration, would then be an "economic and immigration think tank."

Frankly I'm annoyed that an organization can't declare itself "concerned with" a subject without people leveling claims of bias. Why would they do the study if they didn't care about studying immigration?

If there's an issue with the research, find it and argue against it. But "they're biased," nah, I don't bite.

Post reply on HN